Single Occupancy Residences for homeless

I had the pleasure of stopping by Rainbow Books last Friday for a chat with Ald. Marsha Rummel. I didn’t know she was one of the founders of the co-op, however, I suspected that if I didn’t find her there I’d at least find somebody who knew where she was. The Leftist conspiracy is a tight-knit one.

Rummel, one of the most vocal supporters of Madison’s homeless population, told me that what Madison needs is more Single Occupancy Residences (SOR). SORs are better than shelters, many of which are unsanitary and unwelcoming. “Many people prefer to sleep in their cars” than to go to the church or the Porchlight public shelter.

Rummel also told me that, in order to break up settlements of vagrants (see comment below) living in cars, she pushed for an ordinance to create two hour parking on the two concerned blocks of E. Wilson.

2 Responses to “Single Occupancy Residences for homeless”

Hey Sconz….the two hour parking was for two blocks of E Wilson, not the entire city. The bottom line is we need to get people in housing first, and then help them access the services they need whether it is a job or job training, health care, etc.

while i am an avid advocate of the housing first model, i wonder why SROs (Single Room Occupancies, as we call them here in Long Beach) are so necessary to resolve* the problem of homelessness. Most SROs have the same problems as shelters– they can be unsanitary, the population can be rough, and now residents also have the additional problem of scrounging up the money to afford a month of “rent.” Will a homeless person really want to dish out the $220 bucks they earn (again, here in LB) on General Relief to pay off rent for 2 weeks and then be back on the street? I think you’ll find a slew of people would, again, take preference in their cars, should they be lucky enough to have one in these colder months.

And if a person does take up an SRO for a while, isn’t the larger issue the matter of affordable housing? That’s at least the issue here, where the cost of living is estimated at $901.

*my aim is to see the resolution of homelessness, not to temporarily increase the homeless’ level of comfort.